Unfair Trade: Muffins for Tobacco

Are muffins bread? Are they cakes? Are they supposed to be eaten for breakfast, lunch, snack, dessert, or all of the above?

Are muffins really cupcakes without frosting? Thomas Jefferson thought so, and called muffins “a luxury to us.” Today, you can get a recipe for Monticello Muffins at www.monticello.org. But those are not American muffins, tall, soft inside, but with a crispy crust. They are English muffins, yeast-based and flat. Still, in the colonies, they were a novelty and a luxury. In England, though, they probably arrived from Wells together with the most miserly and avaricious, as well as the most unlikely king who won the throne by defeating King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Poor Richard, much maligned in history, hadn’t been able to trade his kingdom for a horse and ended up forfeiting the crown together with life.

Henry Tudor, or Harri Tudur in Welsh, became King Henry VII “by right of conquest” on the strength of his Welsh ancestry and Welsh army and thus ended the War of Roses, or the Cousins War. Having been brought up by a fanatically religious, ascetic mother far from an extravagant Edwardian court, he preferred simple but nourishing ancient Welsh food – bara (bread), small round yeast cakes baked on maen (bakestones).

The Red Dragon of Cadwaladr, symbol of the Tudors’ Welsh roots, did not have a long tenancy on the throne of England. Elizabeth the Great, the last Tudor monarch, dies childless, and King James VI of Scotland, son of poor Mary Stuart, the unfortunate queen who lost her head in her fight for the English crown, gets the crown handed to him for lack of any other heirs. The Jacobean era thrives in literature, arts, and culture, but debts, inherited from the Tudors, plague the country for years, throwing it into economic depression, and culminating in a real, bubonic plague. Shakespearean “Tempest” written during this time, could be a metaphor for James’ reign.

Houses from which bodies were removed would be boarded up, to prevent spreading of the disease. Any inhabitants who were still alive, were left inside with no food – why waste food on those who would soon be dead anyway? The very few fortunate individuals who survived stayed alive due to a bizarre combination of two factors, muffins and tobacco. Muffin men traversed the town streets, ringing their bells (Oxford Companion to Food, A. Davidson, 1999). They did brisk business, accepting coin lowered on strings through cracks between boards and delivering flat muffins the same way, protecting themselves (or so they believed) by… smoking pipes!

It was during James I’s reign that England “acquired the nicotine habit” (Wikipedia) thus enabling Virginia colony to prosper. The King was so incensed that he authored A Counterblaste to Tobacco:

Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse (1604).

The royal admonition went unheeded, and Englishmen got seriously addicted to “the filthie noveltie.” By 1612, London had 7000 tobacconists and smoking houses (ibid.); that’s way more than Miami with its cigar culture!

Two hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson, a wealthy owner of a Virginia tobacco plantation, agreed with King James, calling tobacco “infinitely wretched.” As we already know, he preferred muffins.

Fluffy and moist American muffins are actually quick breads, made without yeast, but instead leavened by a chemical reaction, as explained in the first cookbook published in the U.S. (American Cookery, A. Simmons, 1796). I set out to make them gluten free by using coconut flour and eggless by substituting aquafaba (liquid left from cooking chickpeas). The leavening agent is baking powder which was developed even later, mid-19th century. Smart Balance to make them buttery, agave to sweeten, a splash of vanilla extract for flavoring, and we are ready for the traditional American “luxury” of huge juicy blueberries. James I in his rage against tobacco blamed native Americans, but we are grateful to them by introducing blueberries to the colonists.

We mix coconut flour with baking powder, whisk aquafaba with melted Smart Balance, agave, and vanilla, and combine wet ingredients with dry until smooth. Then we gently fold in those luscious blueberries.

I bake them in my little muffin machine and try not to forget to sprinkle some coconut shreds on top of each before I close the lid. It takes exactly seven minutes for each batch. It’ll take about 15 – 18 minutes to bake all of them in the oven at 400 F.

We eat them for breakfast, lunch, snack, dessert, and just because they are there! My husband just picks one and pops it in his mouth any time he passes by. So I am asking you, Beautiful People: we gave England tobacco, and in return, they gave us muffins – who got a better bargain?

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Hmmm bara bridd is completely different to muffin – the Welsh even took it to Argentina / Arianinn. And muffin is not the same thing in UK as in US – although the two things are now both in common parlance and completely confused.

It does; I actually discovered an old recipe where it is called pice ar y maen, i.e cake rather than bread, but bara maen is given as an alternative name. It is different from later bara bridd that became torta negra in Argentina.

Thank you for your comment. You are right, and I am making a distinction between flat yeast-based English muffins and tall fluffy American ones. However, most sources consider bara bridd a predecessor of flat English muffins that was introduced to London by the Tudors and proliferated during the Jacobean times. I agree with you that they are thoroughly confused now.

As for the tobacco debate – that was huge. William Barclay published ‘Nephenthes or the virtue of tobacco’ in 1614 – see British Libraray Rare Books vol. 1038.1.43 entitled simply ‘Tracts 1614-1633’. ‘Tobacco Battered’, seemingly a response, possibly by the Puritan, George Goodwin, is included in the same volume alongside his ‘Auto-Machia’. Nepenthes is now the name given to carnivorous pitcher plants.

As a Brit in France my boys grew up with muffins as an oversized cupcake. English muffins for me are reserved for eggs Benedict and I’ve never eaten them any other way! What we miss here are crumpets, smothered in butter and maybe jam, honey or marmite.

The North American muffin/cupcake issue confuses me too. I thought at one point that the order/technique in which the ingredients were assembled were the difference, and briefly that it was a sweet verus savoury difference. Since I prefer savoury ie corn bread/muffins, I’m more likely to make them than the sweet cupcake version. Which I make cause a whole cake is a challenge for a single person to eat in a responsible fashion.

Aquafaba … the scariest ingredient I’ve heard of since kombucha. I pour that stuff down the drain before obsessively rinsing out my beans on the rare occasions that I buy the canned ones. 🙂

If you can have eggs, you have no need for aquafaba, but I am on a mission to fight cholesterol. Muffins could be either savory or sweet, although the original muffins were sweet and were called cakes. Go figure! I’ve read one baker’s explanation that once you start by creaming butter with sugar, you are making cupcakes. It doesn’t really make much sense to me, any more than the frosting vs no frosting joke. However, I did call these little creations savory because of the frosting https://koolkosherkitchen.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/only-good-words-for-savory-cupcakes/
P.S. I love kombucha; it reminds me of

Ah, I hadn’t realized that was what you were calling a raft – thank you. No, I don’t mind. Have you ever skimmed cream off the non-pasteurized fresh milk? It also floats like a raft, and it’s the most delicious things in the world, especially with wild strawberries. Neither is available in the U.S., unfortunately. Oh well… I can’t have cream any more, anyway.

Raw milk … I haven’t had any in over 50 yrs since I was a kid and lived in Yugoslavia. You can’t get raw milk in Ontario unless you live/have a membership in a dairy farm cop-op. It’s all pasteurized stuff for our health. 🙂

Thank you, dear Lathiya, for your lovely comment! You are so right – I don’t e what it’s called as long as I can pop it in my mouth and enjoy it, and my husband cares even less!
Those muffin machines are available on Amazon, and they are pretty reasonably priced.

Really enjoyed the historical background and the way you adapted the recipe. My mouth watered as I gazed fondly at the photo.

Being Welsh on my Mother’s side meant growing up with Welsh Cakes. Mom made them on a very large, heavy cast iron frying pan. My grandmother made them on a plank, which was a cast iron plate put into the coal stove, a substitute for the bakestone.

If you’d flattened your creation to about a half inch, they’d have resembled Mom’s Welsh Cakes.

Oh, Mom said that a Welsh cake isn’t really a cake. It isn’t a biscuit, either. And it isn’t a muffin, or a cookie, or anything else. It’s a Welsh Cake. Confused? Try Cawl. Looks like soup. Sort of. Looks like stew. Sort of. But it’s not soup. It’s not stew. It’s Cawl. And then there’s plum pudding. It’s not a pudding. It’s not a fruit cake. It’s. . . yes. Plume Pudding.

Thank you for your wonderful comment – I was laughing almost to tears! Yes, I am aware that Welsh cakes are not really cakes Plum pudding is not a pudding. As to Cawl – only you guys know what it is, but I am tempted to try it one of these days!
Have a great weekend!

Thank you very much!
When I was researching for this post, my original intention was to use some Shakespeare quotes about food. Then I realized that each and everyone of them is a double entendre, totally not acceptable in polite company. They were quite bawdy in those times, you know! Then I remembered Sir Lawrence Olivier as Richard III and found that delightful spoof on Youtube.
The cookbook includes everything but the Youtube videos and Google images.
I am still grappling with the cover, waiting for my artist friend to have a moment for me.

Whatever they are but like you we love them for breakfast, lunch or brunch, snack, anytime. They are easy to prepare and you can make them as healthy as you want. Love your gluten free take on muffins.